Meadows along the western edge of the Great Basin have been grazed by cattle ever since the first emigrant wagons pushed through in the 1840s. By 1850 permanent ranching operations existed, and today more than 80 percent of all agricultural land in...

While the rest of the nation struggled through the Great Depression of the 1930s, there existed a few isolated oases-towns where a single industry offered jobs and allowed families to remain together, intact and relatively unscathed by economic...

Richard "Dick" Graves was born in Boise, Idaho, on August 23, 1912. An astute businessman, he spent nearly twenty years in the gaming industry in Idaho. When that state banned gambling in 1953, he came to Nevada in 1954 to start over. Though many...

As the twentieth century drew to a close, physical changes rendered the Truckee Meadows nearly unrecognizable to those who had helped build the community. Both Reno and Sparks had experienced major expansion since 1960, largely to accommodate a...

This volume stems from the creation in 1997 of the Nevada Mining Oral History Project (NMOHP), focusing on Nevada’s second largest industry—gold and silver mining. The sixteen chroniclers included here recorded more than 60 hours of firsthand...

Edward A. Olsen, a native of New York, was born in 1919. He spent nearly his whole life in the West, as a youngster in Colorado, and as a newspaperman in Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada. Mr. Olsen was handicapped since birth by a serious physical...

In the year 1947 Reno's population was a mere 25,000, yet it boasted a total of 175 attorneys, many serving the wealthy eastern divorce trade. In this era of dude-ranch divorcees, only two other women besides Charlotte Hunter were practicing...

Native Americans; Indians of North America--Nevada; Indians of North America--Education

Interview of Carlene (Jackson) Burton by Terri McBride, transcribed by Barbara L. Zeigler. Carlene is a Western Shoshone woman born in Schurz, Nevada. She attended Stewart Indian School in the late 1950s for one semester, when she was fourteen. Her...

Gordon Alexander Sampson, a native of Canada, was born in 1888. He received his early education and training in the schools of Toronto. Following his formal education, he entered business first as a banker and later as a business analyst and...

In 1900 Churchill County was Nevada's poorest and least populated county, with fewer than 850 residents. It had no appreciable mining industry, and its arid valleys and basins could not support agriculture. Two federal projects would eventually...

Through the Glass Ceiling—A Life in Nevada Politics is the oral history of Sue Wagner, who served in the assembly in the 1970s, in the senate in the 1980s, and was elected lieutenant governor in 1991, serving one term. She became involved in...

Americans of Basque ancestry figure prominently in the history of Nevada. Sheepherding and innkeeping are the activities most commonly associated with the state's Basques in the mind of the general public, but that is an excessively narrow...

From Territorial days to the present, Italian immigrants and their descendants have played important roles in shaping life in northern Nevada. For much of that time they constituted the largest and most influential ethnic group in the region. In...

In 2011, the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) initiated a comprehensive study of the entire Fourth Street-Prater Way corridor, intending to improve not only public transportation in the area, but safety and livability. The conjunction of...

Arnold R. Trimmer, a native of California, spent nearly his entire life in Carson Valley. His parents moved from Diamond Valley, California, to the historic Frey ranch at the outskirts of Genoa in 1909, when he was a child of four. Mr. Trimmer...

When John Francis Cahlan first arrived in Las Vegas in 1929 he could legitimately claim that he was older than the sleepy railroad community founded in 1905. A native of Reno, he was born to Albert and Marion Cahlan in 1902, the youngest of two...

Peter B. Merialdo was born in Eureka, Nevada, in 1899. The son of an immigrant Italian who established his home in Eureka in the 1870s, Mr. Merialdo grew up in that small central Nevada mining town. Once bustling with activity, Eureka declined as...

In popular myth, anyone can make it to the top in America, no matter how humble his or her origins. That may be true, but few have faced greater challenges along the way than did Rollan Melton. Sonny, as he was called when he was young, was born...

Land use--Nevada; Land use--West (U.S.); Public lands--Nevada; Public lands--West (U.S.);

The now famous grassroots rebellion against Washington's control over vast stretches of western land, termed the Sagebrush Rebellion, was conceived in reaction to a series of federal laws issued in the late 1970s, thousands of miles away from those...